News has been circulating online stating that India could see as many as 25 Crore cases of the Coronavirus in the next three months. It has been attributed to a CDDEP-Johns Hopkins report.
India may see 25 crore Coronavirus cases in next 3 months, report from @JohnsHopkins university and the centre of disease dynamics. #IndiaFightsCorona #CoronaUpdates #StayHomeStaySafe
— Rizwan Aman (@RizwanAman8) March 28, 2020
According to this Johns Hopkins Report for india:
Worst scenario: 2500 lac cases
25 lac hospitalisations
Optimistic Scenario: 1200 lac cases
12 lac hospitalisations. pic.twitter.com/92uM7HToOl
— HANGUL (@Hangul93) March 28, 2020
In fact, the news was also share by some prominent media organizations:
FACT CHECK
NewsMobile fact-check the above posts and found it to be misleading.
The news led to instant panic among the Indian audience on social media. We checked the official Twitter handles of Johns Hopkins University as well as CDDEP. We came across a Tweet by the official Johns Hopkins account, which denies direct association with the report.
The use of our logo was not authorized in this case and JHU is engaging with CDDEP on it. Thank you.
— Johns Hopkins University (@JohnsHopkins) March 26, 2020
Further, CDDEP had tweeted the following, stating that their COVID-19 modeling estimates for India were produced by a team of researchers affiliated with CDDEP, Johns Hopkins, and Princeton, and that the work does not reflect the views of CDDEP, Johns Hopkins University or Princeton University:
@ndtv @businessinsider @timesofindia @livemint @OpIndia_com To clarify, our COVID-19 estimates in India were produced by a team of researchers at CDDEP, Johns Hopkins, and Princeton. The institutions have cleared up the discrepancy. pic.twitter.com/OX6RQ5I5OZ
— CDDEP (@CDDEP) March 28, 2020
We also found that NDTV News had retracted the same story, which they stated to have attributed to IANS.
Based on this update, we have deleted the IANS story on this report. https://t.co/3MKAQ9cSlh
— NDTV (@ndtv) March 28, 2020
Hence, the news cannot be attributed to Johns Hopkins University, and is thus, unverified and misleading.
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